Got back from hols last week and then fail to hit my deadline a week later. Unforgivable… but I do have an excuse. Flimsy one, I grant you, but an excuse nonetheless, and a glorious thing it was. Let me enlighten you.
Forty years ago, in 1986, I was a callow youth and just about to leave Drama School, believing that I was the best actor of my generation (this is actually factually correct and it’s just not been validated by fame or indeed fortune) with the world at my feet. For much of the time, in between learning my craft, I lived with a bunch of lovely fellas in a big house, which was essentially a hotbed of nefarious activity and high jinks. And last weekend, most of us met up for the first time as a group since those days.
It was a brilliant weekend. It’s extraordinary that after all this time, we all slipped into our various roles and just enjoyed being with each other as we had so long ago. Of course, we have all been subjected to the slings and arrows of life, but the common threads that had initially bound us felt as strong as ever, and the laughter was as heartfelt and spontaneous. Bonkers really. It would have been easy to slip into some retrospective group melancholia about the past and time gone by, but in reality, we riffed about the here and now and the future. I’ve always been vaguely suspicious about reunions and the like, but I can honestly say that a weekend with old friends (and I’m using all meanings of the word old here) is a magical thing. It is the very stuff of life.
Musically, it wasn’t a throwback, but here’s one from around then and one from now. The radio show was a technical disaster this week, losing as it did my voice for the first hour ( thanks, listener D. Lumbroso, for letting me know). For some, this was a bonus…
As ever…
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